


Snowglobe

by WhyNotFly



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Mostly one-sided Martin to Jon, Takes place in season one when everything's happy and nothing bad has happened, ah if only it could stay this way, all soft edges here, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 17:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19891954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyNotFly/pseuds/WhyNotFly
Summary: Tim talks Jon into going ice skating, but he's never done it before.  Martin is there to help out.





	Snowglobe

“I take it back,” Jon says, curling his fingers around the edge of the wooden bench. “I definitely don’t want to do this.”

“Told you he’d take the coward’s way out.” Tim leans over to Sasha, but his stage whisper is clearly meant for all of them. Jon colors, his brow drawing in tighter.

“Come on, Jon, it won’t be so bad. We, um, we’ll all be doing it together?” Martin holds out one mitten-clad hand in a gesture he hopes is encouraging and not presumptuous. At least the cold wind biting his cheeks rosy will keep Jon from seeing his blush. They’re just friends—coworkers—on a normal after work bonding trip. Nothing more. Jon regards Martin’s hand with trepidation, as if might be a trap.

“I’m sure you’ll all be quite fine without me.”

“Oh come on, boss!” Tim’s voice has the warmth of casual cruelty between friends. A tone Martin could never master. “We’re losing respect for you by the second!”

“I figured you lot just went out to a pub or something,” Jon laments, as if trying to prove himself. “You know, something normal.”

“Since when has Tim ever been normal?” Sasha pretends to be hurt as Tim jabs her in the side. “Or any of us,” she amends lamely.

“It’s Christmas time, Jon. Going ice skating is normal.” Martin is still holding out his hand, feeling more foolish about it by the moment. Jon’s eyes flick to Martin, then down to the proffered mitten, and then down to his feet which are done up in battered old gray rental skates. His ankles wobble as he tests putting a bit more weight on them and Martin thinks that’s it. He really shouldn’t be forcing Jon onto the ice if he isn’t comfortable with it, that’s not what friends—coworkers—do. But then Jon’s hand lands in Martin’s and he pushes himself carefully to standing, and Martin is watching his endlessly expressive dark eyes as they go from spiteful to scared to trusting as he reaches his other hand out for Martin, needing another point of contact to balance on.

“Fine.” Jon looks at Martin and his stomach fills with butterflies. “But you’d better not all just speed off and leave me alone out there.”

“O-of course not,” Martin squeaks, and thinks that if Jonathan Sims asked, he’d never leave him alone ever again.

It’s Tim’s fault really. Like many things are. Once or twice a month he, Martin, and Sasha would go out to a pub and get a few drinks and talk about anything that didn’t belong down in the dimly lit basement of the Institute with its mouldering papers and piles of tapes. They always invited Jon. Jon never accepted. It was a routine song and dance. Martin liked routine, it was comforting, it gave him time to figure out how to act and what to feel. But this time, as Tim accosted Jon when he returned to his office with a file under his arm, Jon just sighed and pushed his glasses up to rub at the bridge of his nose. 

“Perhaps that would be good for me,” he said, sounding tired. Martin made a mental note to put a bit more sugar in his next cup of tea. “I think I’ve been reading too many statements. They’ve been...getting to me. I could use something normal.”

“Great,” Tim said with a smile that meant nothing good. He leaned sideways to catch Martin’s eye over Jon’s shoulder. “We’re going ice skating.”

They had most definitely not been planning on going ice skating. But Martin faintly remembered mentioning to Tim that he was proud of how good at skating he is, after a tragic period in middle school (into early highschool) where he thought he could use it to take cute boys on skating dates. 

“Ice skating?” Jon sounded disgruntled. Martin desperately shook his head _no_ at Tim who responded with a wink and a smile that did nothing to allay Martin’s panic. “Well, that’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

“It’ll be fun, Jon,” Sasha piped in, also ignoring Martin’s frantic gestures. “There’s this cute little outdoor rink they set up not too far from here. It’s not too crowded, and it’s pretty cheap. Martin’s been really wanting to go.”

“Martin has?” Jon turned around and Martin rushed to drop his arms. Jon was sizing him up with his gaze that always seemed to find Martin lacking. Jon sighed again. “I suppose it won’t be the worst thing in the world to try.” 

Martin said, “You’ve never been ice skating?” at the exact same time Tim said, “Great we’ll just grab you after work.” And then Jon was being bundled back into his office, complaining all the while about assistants with too much time on their hands and the mountain of organization still left to do. Martin hardly had time to accost Tim before the work day was over and the four of them were all squishing into a cab and Martin was stuck in the middle seat so Jon’s thigh was pressed tight to the side of his, and the whole trip passed in a blur of hazy distraction.

And now they’re on the ice. Jon is...Well, Jon is so talented at so many things, Martin forces himself to think, as if he’s worried about being unfair to his boss for noticing how endearingly helpless he is on the ice. His legs wobble like a baby deer and his forehead is pinched and angry above the line of his tightly wrapped scarf. Martin knows how much Jon hates the cold. But he can’t help but be grateful that he gets to see him like this, bundled and cross and determined. He slides his feet back and forth uselessly beneath him, getting nowhere, and Martin wonders how lucky he could possibly be to get to see the very first time Jonathan Sims tries to ice skate. After all the demands and expectations and perfectly pressed button downs, it’s just so unbelievably human.

Jon stumbles, but Martin is there to catch him, broad and stable. Martin tries not to think too much about how it feels to have Jon clutching at his puffy jacket, or how close to an embrace it is when he reaches around to bring Jon carefully back to his feet. Jon stays close and Martin knows it is just for balance that he all but wraps himself around Martin’s arm, but it honestly doesn’t matter. If he never gets more than this, he’ll be content.

“I’m shocked that there aren’t more statements about the horrors of ice skating,” Jon says, dryly.

“You get used to it really fast, really,” Martin says, looking down at Jon where he’s clinging to him. “I promise.”

“I’d be happy if I just live through this.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall.” Martin pushes off with his foot and they glide together a little, Jon gripping tighter at the motion. “Here, let go of me for a second, you won’t fall Jon, I’m right here.”

Martin disentangles his arm from Jon’s grip and turns himself around, holding both hands out for Jon to take. Their eyes meet and the warmth in Martin’s stomach goes suddenly cold. What is he doing? This is his _boss_ and Martin’s been hanging all over him. He’s forced him out ice skating which he didn’t want to do and repeatedly said he didn’t want to do, and now he’s basically trapped him out here. Jon doesn’t even like touching. Jon doesn’t even like Martin.

And then Jon lifts his hands and takes Martin’s and squeezes once, his gratitude bleeding through. Martin can see his scowl from behind his scarf and it is beautiful because it is Jon. Tim and Sasha whiz past them as they make another circuit, their laughter crystallizing in the cold air. Martin begins to slowly skate backwards, pulling Jon along behind him.

“Thank you for not racing off like _some_ people.” Jon’s voice is biting and sarcastic, but it lights something warm and glowing behind Martin’s ribs.

“I won’t let you fall,” Martin says again, and Jon looks quietly grateful. He squeezes Martin’s hands again, and Martin tries to pretend it’s not because he started to slip. Martin looks up in surprise as a snowflake lands on his cheek, sudden and cold. All around them, people begin to exclaim as the snow drifts down, like a scene from an old movie. The kind Martin used to watch as he sat with his mother in front of their old black and white tv.

“Oh great.” Jon says, sounding just as miserly as ever. “This is going to make the commute tomorrow miserable.”

Martin looks down at Jon, snowflakes catching in his dark hair, and thinks that if everything else in his life is awful, he’ll never regret this.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! And thank u to @somnuscribe for reading it first. And telling me to call it sMitten which is the worst thing I've ever read with my own two eyes.
> 
> Come find me on tumblr @apatheticbutterflies and talk to me about the magnus archives. Clearly you can see how upset season 4 has made me I'm cowering in my pre-season 1 feel good times. Can't everyone just be happy??


End file.
